The Email Wars

This year was a special year for the eROI team. Instead of SIX people we sent FIFTEEN of the team representing all of the specialized groups to the SXSW Interactive event in Austin, Texas. Five Days, 15 people, 1000s of ideas, and 30 helpings of Ribs.

With this many people passionate about everything digital but with different views and agendas for SXSW, we decided that we would be able to cover more of the event, panels and sessions (as well as parties) by setting out to follow our own individual plans and paths to learning. The sum of the collective is more powerful than that of the individual right? The plan was for all of us to recap lessons and new ideas learned whether we could find usable ways to employ them in our projects or lives or not. By covering more we could ingest more. There was an implied “ROI” in the whole growth of the attendee plan and we would share our knowledge with the entire team when we returned.

But why stop just at our team, why not share it all with you? If you read our other blogs (notice them in the top header of this blog) you will find that everyone is openly recapping sessions, conversation and ideas that they brought back with them.

Here is what we learned from the event:

1. There are 1000’s Social media douche bags/experts:

Now what do we mean by this? Well it seems everyone out there is rushing to claim their post on the internet as a self proclaimed social media expert. Rule one, if you tell someone, list in your bio, or use the word (EXPERT) you might be one of them. I can attest to the set of SMDB trading cards I brought home from the event. They are now on my shelve of bad ideas never to consider.

The idea of social media and community is about sharing, not advancing your own agenda, rank or popularity at the cost of others. Some people think that it is the fastest way to stardom, but from those we spoke with that is not the case. Value in conversations and collaboration is where social media is at. Try to remember that with your next Tweet, post or comment.

Those who are rushing to grab a status of “expert” are not providing any long term good content to the community that makes up “community” on the web. Be a resource not a shouter. Listen and engage.

2. The more open we make things, the more we need to think about how they fit together.

With so many new technologies opening up new ways to engage, create content and get your messages to those that want them; we also need to be cognizant of not silo’ing them. Making sure that content is portable in a way that it can be shared across mediums is the way to think. We spent a few hours at the Facebook garage learning about how others were doing just this, opening our minds to develop sites, emails and campaigns to use connective technologies.

If you have a “social” strategy you need to find out how to best leverage your efforts so that they transcend multiple locations and are more available to your customers, influencers, and new prospects. Allowing content to live independently is a new idea with many marketers when they realize that they are letting go of control. Many of you might think that you are there, but look within your company and efforts and you might find that you place many controls around your content.

Now I am not saying let it go free, but do release it to the extent that you are able to. You will find that it will help your programs and your efforts grow faster than you expected.

3. User experience is a tricky beast.

What you might think is the right way, may not be the way that everyone you are engaging with on your site wants or knows how to use it. We spend so much time in tech specs, wire frames, site architecture and testing flows to goals that often we forget the end user. The funny thing is that all of these above mentioned things are built to take that into account. But in the end less is more, design needs to be uncomplicated and removed from the technical experience. By finding how we use things we end up simplifying the ways that we display data from the presentation layer of experience.

Be prepared to launch and learn from what you put out there. Don’t think that your first rev of any campaign or site is going to be perfect. It is not. As soon as you release it you can learn from the actual usage of the application, site, campaign, lead capture, forms, etc from your Analytics and User feedback to make things better.

We are all used to the ALPHA of new ideas as users, but are you comfortable with your own? Do you launch and learn or launch and pray? I would choose learning and change every time, as would almost everyone at SXSW.

4. What makes YOU happy may not be what makes ME happy.

The keynote presented by Tony, CEO of Zappos, was focused around his thoughts on happiness and creating not only the experience for your customers but for your internal employees. We took it with a grain of salt understanding that how he worked to find happiness for all that Zappos encounters may not be the exact way that our people and customers define it. You need to look for things that create the delighted “customer” that work in your business. The magic bullet is just that, a magic bullet, and not all of us are shooting with the same guns.

Happiness is not a constant. It is something that you must always work for, listen for, and strive to employ change across your organization and marketing.

5. We are all facing the same issues, problems and challenges.

In many sessions that we led by moderators, giving the conversation to the attendees, it was a open forum for agencies, film makers, corporate marketers, designers, programmers, and thought leaders to be completely open with one another. These sessions were almost like good 12 step groups giving people a place to have a meaningful conversation where opinions were strong and the level of ideas were stronger. I can personally attest to folks at large corporations stating things almost off-record that you might not ever hear anywhere else. It was powerful not only to hear that they, like you, face these same issues that you might be facing, but also it gave a human face to the people behind the curtain.

Of all the sessions these break outs were of the most value to many of us. It allowed you to understand that the things you wrestle with in order to do great work are not just your issues. Everyone is facing these problems head on and are open to solving them. From privacy, to preferences, to opt in, to data storage, to user experience everyone is trying to do the best thing for the end user.

What would have been good would be to get some normal people in the room as well, as most everyone at SXSW is an “alpha user”, to see how they responded to some of these thoughts and solutions.

What we learned overall:

It turned out not only to be about the ideas shared at the event, but the ideas shared and discussed outside of the eROI offices between teammates that might have brought us the most knowledge about ourselves and the work that we do for our clients and partners. It was about IRL (in real life) connecting with people and holding candid, open, and transparent conversations outside of our own walls. Funny how the walls of your office or your brand sometimes keep you from seeing things from a new view or perspective.

Events like SXSW not only educate those that attend on new ideas, but they also open us up to think about all things in new ways.

I encourage you not only to attend the event next year, but take time to read the learnings of our other team members on our other blogs. All of the ideas and knowledge gleamed made us return with a new focus on how we create, design and think about the work we do for our clients and ourselves.

Only 330 days left… and counting.